Abi
Rose’s paper published in Addiction (Open Access) investigated the effects of alcohol
devaluation on attentional bias for alcohol pictures and alcohol-seeking
behaviour. Devaluing beer, by making it taste bitter, led to decreased alcohol-seeking
(pressing a button to get beer) and it also reduced attentional bias for
alcohol pictures. Most importantly, the
reduction in alcohol-seeking after devaluation was partially mediated by the
reduction in attentional bias. While this doesn’t mean that attentional bias
plays a causal role in drinking behaviour, it does suggest that attentional
bias ‘tracks’ the subjective value of alcohol, which is consistent with most of
the previous research on this topic.

Joanne
Dickson and colleagues published a study in Psychopharmacology (Open
Access) which looked at implicit alcohol associations in alcohol dependent
patients. They found that alcohol
dependent patients had weak negative implicit alcohol associations compared to
non-dependent controls. Surprisingly the alcohol-dependent and control groups
did not differ on positive implicit alcohol associations. Previous studies have
shown that non-dependent drinkers have strong negative implicit alcohol
associations, and this is the first study to examine these associations in
people with alcohol dependence. Perhaps the weak negative alcohol associations
in people with alcohol dependence means that they fail to develop automatic
‘brakes’ on their drinking behaviour as they experience the negative
consequences of drinking

Finally, Matt
Field collaborated with colleagues at the University of Sussex to examine the brain
mechanisms involved when a small ‘priming’ dose of alcohol increases attentional
bias to alcohol-related stimuli. In this paper, published in
Neuropsychopharmacology (Open
Access) participants were given either a placebo or a low or high dose of
alcohol before completing an attentional bias task in an fMRI scanner. They
found that participants who consumed a low dose of alcohol (0.4 grams per
kilogram of body weight) demonstrated an increased attentional bias, and this
effect was associated with increased activation in subcortical hypothalamic
areas of the brain, regions that have previously been implicated in salience
attribution and arousal. The participants that got the high alcohol dose showed
similar performance and brain activation to the group that got placebo, which
is consistent with previous behavioural studies. High doses of alcohol just
don’t seem to influence attentional bias – we only see effects after fairly low
doses.

Links to some other published work:

Alcohol
expectancy abolishes goal-directed control of tobacco-seeking. From Hogarth on
et al., published in Addiction Biology (Open
Access)

Alcohol-related
cues reduce cognitive control in social drinkers. From Nikolaou et al.,
published in Behavioural Pharmacology (Open
Access)

Andy Jones and Matt Field published a letter in the Psychologist about reporting of #overlyhonestmethods,you can read it for free here (the letter is on page 242).

Other news

Welcome to Eric Robinson, who has
joined the Department of Psychological Sciences to work on projects related to
addiction and appetite / obesity. Eric wasted no time getting
in the news to talk about his latest appetite research, and is already
working on some addiction-related projects. In fact, if you are a University of
Liverpool student, you can take part in his online study here.

Abi Rose and Paul Christiansen
appeared on the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘Word of Mouth’, discussing the effects
of alcohol on speech. You can listen to the episode here. Abi also gave a
public lecture about alcohol for Café Scientifique in
December 2012. Matt Field appeared on Radio 5 live – extremely briefly –
talking about a study that we covered in the last research roundup (press
release here),
and was subsequently on BBC Radio Merseyside talking about criminalization of
heroin users.

Andy Jones, Paul Christiansen and Matt Field are now
writing the occasional article for the Mental
Elf, a website which offers non-technical summaries of mental health
research for healthcare professionals. You can expect further contributions from other members of the group in the near future! On a sort-of related note, Natasha Clarke is writing a blog about her experiences
as an alcohol researcher. It’s much better than the one you are reading now, so
you should take a look!